


Breaking Apart

by FiresFromOurHearts



Series: Small Harry Potter Things [39]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Arguments, Friends to Enemies, Friendship breaking, Gen, Hogwarts Founders Era, Hurt, I don't think I'm really capable of writing anything super awful so it's probably not too bad, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28704726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiresFromOurHearts/pseuds/FiresFromOurHearts
Summary: For a long time, the Founders are happy. But happiness does not last forever and there is one argument that always tears them apart. This time, it does so for the last time.Salazar walks away.
Relationships: Godric Gryffindor & Helga Hufflepuff & Rowena Ravenclaw & Salazar Slytherin
Series: Small Harry Potter Things [39]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/719196
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Breaking Apart

It goes down like this: Salazar Slytherin stands on one side and says that the proper precautions must be taken. If they’re going to invite all magic students within Hogwarts, as they must since they are creating a school of magic, they must be prepared to wipe the memories of muggle families.

He has been having this argument for many weeks now. Not only with Godric, but also Rowena and Helga. They simply don’t understand the dangers of letting muggle parents know the truth.

And the truth is that the muggles are not always kind people, and that far too often they prefer to kill those who are different to them. Or sacrifice them, as the case was for him. Salazar has had enough of seeing children die, has had enough of watching them die.

“Salazar, we cannot do this,” Godric says, almost begs. And Salazar stands stiff, stands still, in the face of his friends. Not even for them will he bow in this regard. For the children, for their lives and so that they may keep dreaming, he will stand still and he will not bend.

“We must,” Salazar counters. “If we wish for them to live, we must take them from their homes and wipe the memories of the muggles they were surrounded with.”

“We cannot take someone from their family Salazar!” Helga shouts, and her anger is a fierce thing. Salazar knows she would refuse to have families separated, but in this, they must do so. It will lead to their fall otherwise. “I will not disrupt more families and tear them apart. I will have no hand in this.”

The last person then, to disagree, is Rowena, and Salazar turns to her even as he knows where she stands. But she is the only other one like him, who has seen the horrors of what muggles do their own kind and to those who are not like them. She, too, has seen people burnt and has ventured through the bodies and found children they had come to retrieve to teach. But Rowena had thought it a single occurrence and Salazar has never been able to convince her otherwise.

He’s never been able to convince any of them otherwise. This has always been the impasse between them, ground trodden often enough that they have avoided the topic to prevent repeating an argument that never ends. They are all brave, stubborn fools who will not back down, and Salazar will continue to remain as he does—even against all three of them. He would protect the students to the best of his capabilities, and sometimes that means standing against their blood family.

Blood family, after all, doesn’t mean your chosen family. Sometimes blood family is your chosen family and sometimes it isn’t. Salazar has always belonged to the latter category. His closest friends tend be part of the first category.

“We cannot break families apart,” Rowena says at last, her words soft and they rain down devastatingly on his shoulders. Salazar strengthens his stance and breathes in, before breathing out slowly, and does _not_ flinch from the blow that had just been landed. It seems, at long last, this argument has formed a barrier between them. It’s one of their own making and it’s not one that Salazar will break himself. He’s not going to change his stance, not now. Not ever.

“This is where I draw the line,” Salazar tells them. “I will not remain here as you let children die out in the world.”

It is Godric, brave, foolhardy idiot that he is, who draws his wand in one hand and sword in the other. And that hurts Salazar more than he could ever say. He had thought their friendship would not end in blows, would not end in Godric drawing his weapons and threatened Salazar. It seemed he was wrong.

“Then you must leave,” Godric booms, voice loud as thunder. “We will not abide by what you suggest.”

“You are dooming those children!” Salazar shouts, even as he keeps his wand sheathed, though ready to call his magic to him at the slightest hint of a fight breaking out.

“No,” Helga says, shaking her head, and she too grips her wand, and how could this have gone so wrong? “We will be teaching them. You would be breaking them.”

“You’ll always be welcome here,” Rowena says, the blow almost softening before she adds, “so long as you do not break apart families. These students belong here and we will keep them, and their families safe.”

“And how do you keep them safe from their families?” Salazar spits out, the venom dropping from his tongue like he is a snake with his own set of fangs. He steps backward. This is where he leaves them. _This_ is the end of everything he has worked towards. This is the breakdown of all the family he has left.

It seems he chose the wrong family, in the end. Or perhaps he was destined to always have the wrong family, whether it be found or blood family.

“I will go,” he says. “And I only hope those children do not pay for your decision.”

He sweeps away, the cold curling around his bones. The stones beneath his feet feel overly hard and Hogwarts suddenly seems like a friendless place, a lonesome one. He walks, one step after the other, and only when he has just passed the boundary of the school does he pause, looking back. “I hope those children will be safe,” he says, the words torn away by the howling wind. “I hope they are happy. I hope none of the awful things I went through happen to them.” But he knows that it is already too late to hope for such things. The only thing he can do from now on is try to keep it from happening again, even if the others refuse to do nothing.

That’s alright though. Salazar knows how to live on his own. After all, he’s done it before.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings about Salazar apparently. Honestly, it's probably likely that people were just killing their kids for being weird/strange/abnormal? I mean, I have no idea what time period it was and I have no plans to do any research for any of these short stories, so. 
> 
> Anyway, Salazar had opinions and so did the others and really they just all failed to come to a compromise which would've fixed everything. Unfortunately, nothing actually gets fixed and instead we just have the breakdown of the group and Salazar leaving Hogwarts for the final time. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


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